I have written before about being Han Chinese and queer in China. What about being Uyghur and queer in China? Certainly that must be different, you might think, knowing I was in an ethnic minority and Muslim region. Indeed. Indeed it sure was.
Eger siz girim qilip yasingiz, teximu chirayliq bop qalidikensiz! Siz oghul bala bilen qaraghanda opoxshesh.
If only you wore make-up and got dressed up, you would be so much prettier! You look exactly like a boy.
Comments like these filled my ears on a daily basis, comments that were strange to me partially because they were spoken in a new foreign language that I was learning, Uyghur.
Uyghur is the language of the Turkic minority peoples living in Xinjiang, the region of Far West China bordering Kazakhstan where I was conducting doctoral dissertation fieldwork.
I was immersing myself in a Muslim community for the first time. I was still learning the basics of what it meant to eat Halal and fast during Ramadan. I soon learned what people were saying. Like never before in my life, my gender was a cornerstone in most social interactions.
I soon began to build close friendships with Uyghurs around me patient enough to listen to my stumbling grammar and awkward accent. I slowly became fluent in the Uyghur language as I continued to hear more comments that were strange at first, and then became normal.
I was told: “Because you’re a girl, don’t walk around with your legs uncovered.”
I learned: “The word ‘strong’ (kuchluk) is only used to describe men.”
I tried to fit in. I covered my legs with black tights underneath long, loose skirts. I covered my feelings for girls under words, switching out boyfriend when I meant girlfriend.
I didn’t hide the fact that I might not get married. They reacted with howls of giggling.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” people always told me in response.
I covered my past with secrecy and silence. For example, when things like my virginity suddenly became a topic of conversation, I lied and just pretended that I was. I had quickly learned that casually mentioning things like going on vacation with my boyfriend at the time, or sharing my plans to move in with him, was not okay because it signaled close intimacy before marriage. Friends instructed me sternly, “You shouldn’t tell people that. It’s okay with me, but it’s best if you keep that to yourself.”
People assumed I was a virgin when I told them I had never been married. When hanging out with married women friends, they would allude to sex and turn to me to say, “You’ll understand when you get married,” and collapse into laughter. I learned not to correct them.
For Uyghur people, staying a virgin until marriage was an important part of modesty and femininity. Families checked the sheets for blood on their daughter-in-law’s wedding night.
Hymen reconstruction surgery, or else buying vials of blood to sprinkle on the sheets, was not uncommon. These were two well-known and widely advertised ways to get around this façade of virginity and feminine “purity."
I was hiding in secrecy and shame a lot during my first several months in Xinjiang.
My bisexuality was something I had denied for a long time. I had kept it closeted for so long—from my friends, family, and myself—that at first I found it easier to keep that part of myself a secret while in the field, at least for a time.
My non-conforming gender, however, was not so easy to hide. I like keeping my hair short. I train boxing and jiujitsu and other sports. I dress like a boy and wear boy’s underwear. Uyghur people in Xinjiang made comments all the time.
“You look exactly like a boy,” they echoed on an almost daily basis.
I desperately wanted to blend in.
“If I’m going to do research in Xinjiang about the Uyghur people, I need to present like them as chaste and feminine,” I thought to myself at the beginning.
I conformed to dressing like Uyghur women. I even grew my hair out to my shoulders for a time. I wore earrings and covered my chest with colorful scarves. I wore makeup.
And it worked. I found acceptance in the Uyghur community. I got compliments all the time about how beautiful I was. I didn’t feel beautiful though. I felt ugly on the inside and the outside, like eating a sour grape and pretending that it was sweet. And I could feel my mouth frowning more often than it was smiling as I felt that I had to continue eating the sour grapes. I felt like a fake and a fraud for presenting myself in a way that didn’t reflect who I really was.
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